Mutually exclusive sense–antisense transcription at FLC facilitates environmentally induced gene repression

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Rosa, Stefanie, Duncan, Susan and Dean, Caroline (2016) Mutually exclusive sense–antisense transcription at FLC facilitates environmentally induced gene repression. Nature Communications, 7. ISSN 2041-1723

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Abstract

Antisense transcription through genic regions is pervasive in most genomes; however, its functional significance is still unclear. We are studying the role of antisense transcripts (COOLAIR) in the cold-induced, epigenetic silencing of Arabidopsis FLOWERING LOCUS C (FLC), a regulator of the transition to reproduction. Here we use single-molecule RNA FISH to address the mechanistic relationship of FLC and COOLAIR transcription at the cellular level. We demonstrate that while sense and antisense transcripts can co-occur in the same cell they are mutually exclusive at individual loci. Cold strongly upregulates COOLAIR transcription in an increased number of cells and through the mutually exclusive relationship facilitates shutdown of sense FLC transcription in cis. COOLAIR transcripts form dense clouds at each locus, acting to influence FLC transcription through changed H3K36me3 dynamics. These results may have general implications for other loci showing both sense and antisense transcription.

Item Type: Article
Additional Information: This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article’s Creative Commons license, unless indicated otherwise in the credit line; if the material is not included under the Creative Commons license, users will need to obtain permission from the license holder to reproduce the material. To view a copy of this license, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
Uncontrolled Keywords: gene silencing,long non-coding rnas,plant development,plant molecular biology
Faculty \ School: Faculty of Science > School of Biological Sciences
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Depositing User: Pure Connector
Date Deposited: 13 Oct 2016 15:00
Last Modified: 22 Oct 2022 01:45
URI: https://ueaeprints.uea.ac.uk/id/eprint/60925
DOI: 10.1038/ncomms13031

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